La Sal Mountains

Dave and I drove up to Moab for a weekend of fun. We arrived at Fred's house at midnight on Friday and quickly headed to bed.

The next morning, Fred, Craig, Dave and I started off at Fred's house at about 6:20 and headed on the Flat Pass road near his house on the outside of Moab. We exited the Flat Pass at around 9ish.

We jumped on the La Sal Pass Road for a bit before jumping on a dirt road to access the Trans La Sal road to Geyser Pass. There were a few sections when I got to chat with Fred, mostly small talk, but nevertheless it made those long sections uphill go by quicker.

We had a bit of a lunch on the dirt road before heading up to Burro Pass (a little under 11,000 feet). Here is a nice shot from Fred and I on the way to Burro Pass (picture taken by Dave C.)



On the top of Burro Pass, the gang waited for me as I was hiking my bike up and sucking wind. We stopped for a few Dark Chocolate M&M's courtesy of Dave, before heading down a steep set of switchbacks. The trail passed the green, lush area around the Mill Creek and the Dry Fork, which was running.



We continued on to Hazard, an area that has seen some major improvements from trail volunteers, according to Craig and Fred. We popped out of Hazard to Kokopelli and continued on to Porcupine. I managed to fall twice in Porcupine, both of which were what I would like to call a "smart" fall where the body is not hurt to bad since you either land or your legs or tuck and roll. Anyway, I was glad I pushed the limit in a few technical sections enough to fall.

Nice shot of Castle Valley (where Craig lives) from Porcupine Rim (picture from Dave C.)

Craig and Fred blasted down most of the sections of Porcupine, graciously waiting every few miles to make sure I was chugging along. We dropped out of Porcupine to Negro Bill just as the sun was setting. I did have a flat tire about 1 mile away from Craig's car, good timing since Craig

The ride back on Highway 191 was a little hard due to the wind gusts. Dave opted to stop for some gatorade, since he was the only one to money.

The profile view of the trip to Moab that we did.


The Google view of the loop

The stats from the trip:

13907 feet of climbing
70.59 miles
15 hours out on the trail

In case you wanted the GPX format from the trip, or see more information about the trip, click here to see the route via Motion Based and Google.

Thanks again to F&S Crew for allowing us to crash at their house.

Also, a few more pictures and Dave's write-up can been seen on the MTBR Forum website.